


Midnight Tale

by wordwhisper



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, set post-Thor: Ragnarok and during the first part of Infinity War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-05-02 04:06:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14536275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordwhisper/pseuds/wordwhisper
Summary: "It's really bad this time, isn't it?"The pad of Thor’s thumb is running along Loki’s chin, gently tracing the line of his jaw."Probably."inspired bythisbecause I’m evil





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so believe it or not this was (apart from a few sentences in the middle) actually written before Infinity War came out, I still can't believe Marvel made me sit through my worst nightmare like this. It was an amazing movie though and I hope this helps a little with the post-movie depression ;)

“It really is bad this time, isn’t it?”

The pad of Thor’s thumb is running along Loki’s chin, gently tracing the line of his jaw. They’re facing each other on the small bed in Thor’s suite, naked legs tangled beneath the blanket and Thor’s skin glistening with cooling sweat in the dim light from the corridor behind him. He’s still panting a little, chest rising and falling rapidly.

“Probably.”

“Are you afraid?”

His thumb moves to Loki’s mouth, slides along the curve of his bottom lip.

“No. Not right now.”

“Do you think they’ll make it?”

“I don’t know, it’s different this time. He’s different.”

There are heavy footsteps audible outside their door for a moment, muffled voices moving towards the improvised dining room at the end of the hall, but like all those other nights Loki’s ended up here Thor doesn’t even flinch. They’re long gone by the time he drops his hand to the covers between them with one last swipe of his finger over Loki’s cheek.

“But they survived Ragnarok, they’ll get through this, too. Some of them, at least.”

“Do you think we will?”

“Do you want to?”

Loki rolls onto his back, their arms still touching between them.

“Remember that time you fell off a tree when we dodged class to sneak down to the river for the whole day and told me to tell our father that you bravely succumbed to your wounds in case you didn’t make it back?”

“Did I?”

“Yeah, you did.”

“Well, it’d at least have sounded more exciting that the truth.”, Thor says and Loki can hear the smile in his voice, “stories always do, that’s why we read them. Try to make them real.”

“You were nine years old.”

“Not anymore.”

Two of the lights on the ceiling just above them have started to flicker, the black metal dented in several places like someone’d thrown something at it.

“It still feels strange, you know? He was this towering, strong presence his whole life that always imagined he’d die that way, too. On the battlefield, with a sword in his hand.”

  
It’s unexpected how much it still stings, a sudden, stab-precise blow that spreads beneath Loki’s ribs and pushes against his lungs until they’re numb and all he can say is:

“Mother did.”

For a moment Thor’s completely, utterly quiet, another group of people walking by outside, then settles onto his back as well, the sheets rustling softly with the movement.

“There’s a prophecy, you know, that the oldest son of every king has to die violently in some way, that’s part of the reason father was always so protective of me. He told me that it came from a beautiful, young princess who fell in love with one of our ancestors and met him in secret for years because she was already engaged to one of her father’s warriors before she finally made it official. Right before their wedding was supposed to take place the princes’ friends, unhappy with the fact that their future king was planning to marry a foreigner they considered far below their standards, somehow convinced her that he’d cheated on her and never actually had any intention of marrying her. She completely broke down at first, then she tried to kill him, twice until she decided that he wasn’t worth it and swore that she’d make sure no other girl had to deal with men like him ever again instead.”

He clears his throat, eyes set on the ceiling when Loki turns to look at him.

“No one knows where she was supposed to come from, or if the realm still exists if she was real, but generations of princes have grown up with that story ever since. Feared it.”

“Do you think it’s real?”

“I think it doesn’t matter.”, Thor says after a few moments, gaze flickering to Loki briefly, “whether or not there’s actually something more going on, it’s somehow always happened. There’s always a battle, or a conveniently placed knife. And apart from that it’s not dying that’s difficult, it’s failing and having to live on after someone else has.”

His voice hardens and Loki can’t tell if he means Frigga, or him, or both.

“You can’t always win. No one can. There’s nothing new about that.”

“Just promise me that you’ll try.”

It takes a moment to settle in fully, word by shaky word, and Loki realizes then that he can’t, never could because it’s never been himself he’s been afraid for either so instead of saying anything he shifts one leg over Thor’s hips until his hands are braced on the mattress on either side of Thor’s head, his thighs pressed against Thor’s. His heart is beating steadily beneath Loki’s mouth, strong and defiant and alive.

“Promise me.”, he repeats, gasping when Loki grazes his teeth against his shoulder.

“Please.”

Loki kisses him to keep him from saying more, hard and determined, before he grounds his hips down once, then again, more intently. Thor pulls his mouth away to gasp against his neck, hands coming up to grip Loki’s sides, and for a moment Loki is scaringly close to saying it back.

 

***

 

The first attack comes three days later, two space ships appearing out of nowhere. By the time they get to the main section there’s a steady stream of people trying to get to the dinner hall, repeated hits crashing against the metal cover on the outside of the station. One entire section is completely dented in, smoke coming out of two of the rooms but the ship holds, somehow, and so far no one seems to be seriously injured.

“What happened?”

Valkyrie’s leaning against one of the walls near the entrance, sword in hand, but she’s still wearing her normal jeans and sweater, her feet in a pair of Banner’s socks. She pushes off it as soon as they’ve come to a stop in front of her, throwing her spare knife to Thor without warning.

“Three hits on the sides, one at the front.”

“Where’s Banner?”

“Still in the room, he said he didn’t want to make it four.”

Thor slides the knife into his belt, then passes his own to Loki blindly.

“How many weapons do we have?”

“Not enough.”

Another blow hits a few meters away from them, hard enough to make them stumble back against the wall, then a second time further down the corridor. In front of them, people start to scream.

“We need to get them to the deck below.”, Thor says, gaze darting back towards them from where he’d been looking down the hallway. “from what it looks like it’s not going to help much once they really launch the attack, but it’ll give us some time to figure something out.”

Valkyrie stumbles a little when she scrambles to her feet again, wincing as soon as she sets her full weight on her right foot.

“Heimdall’s already trying to, but we –”

Another hit shakes the whole section, pushing Loki against her harshly for a moment.

“We need to get to the weapons first.”, she finishes, one hand on the wall to steady herself, “the storeroom behind the dinner hall.”

“I thought we didn’t have enough.”

“We can try.”

 

***

 

“Who are you?”

She’s sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, beautiful in the cold, detached way of an predator with her dark hair falling lose around her shoulders and one leg draped casually over the other. The make-shift tables they’d used for the meals are turned over everywhere, food and metal plates scattered over the floor at her feet.

“Are you sure that’s the most important question right now?”

“Alright, what do you want?”

The hint of a smile tugs at her mouth, her fingers tapping against the metal.

“To be honest I expected a bit more after all the stories they’d told me about my famous uncle.”

“Uncle?”

“Great, you’re stupid, too.”

“You’re Hela’s daughter?”

She immediately turns to Loki, one eyebrow crocked challengingly.

“And who’re you supposed to be?”

Her feet barely make a sound against the floor as she slides out of the chair even though she’s wearing four inch heels, running one of her fingers along the knife that’d been splayed across her lap with her eyes still on Loki.

“You don’t look like him so I suppose that Odin either had another girl somewhere or he started just randomly collecting children for himself all over the universe after he was done with ruining his own.”

Thor’s hand settles on his shoulder, gently holding him back.

“Since you’re obviously smarter than him at least.” She tips her chin towards Thor. “Probably the second.”

“You’re here for him, aren’t you? Thanos?”

“With him.”

“Why?”

“Alright, I take it back, you’re both obviously seriously dumb.”

Somewhere at her right two men move out of the shadows, their faces covered with carefully crafted, black helmets and spears raised.

“Asgard is gone, there’s literally nothing left for you to claim.”

“They’re still my people, too. Always will be.”

Thor’s fingers tighten around Loki’s shoulder, hard.

“Did you even think before killing her? Your own sister, the only real one you ever had?”

She takes another step closer, the hint of a smile playing around the corner of her mouth when she sees Valkyrie instinctively move in at his other side.

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“You did, and you made it, that’s why you’re king now.”

“I’m not going to just let you to take them or murder them.”, Thor snaps, a ragged, dangerous edge beneath the words Loki hasn’t heard for a long time, “I won’t.”

“Who says that I’m going to take them?”

Her body barely moves when she throws the knife, grazing the shoulder one of the men in front of them before it settles in Loki’s arm just below his bicep. He gasps, more shock than actual pain, one hand instinctively coming up press against the spot. It comes away bloody.

“I’m not interested in people’s subjugation, which is one of the reasons why your ship is still standing.”

Loki manages to raise his hand just in time to catch the second hit with a calculated shove of magic, the knife trembling to a stop mid-air between them.

“I’m going to make them come to me.”

 

***

 

Half an hour later they’re gone, only the shreds of metal and plastic left on the corridors where they’d broken in one of the doors or something had fallen down. Her power still hangs in the air, heavy and thick with a raw, unchecked energy he’s never felt before.

“That can’t have been it.”, Thor says, tying up the torn bit of fabric around Loki’s arm, “she can’t possibly be that dumb.”

“She isn’t.”

Loki jerks his arm away the moment he’s finished, pushing himself back onto his feet. Valkyrie’s sorting through the weapon compartment on the other side of the room, back turned towards them.

“I heard that he had a girlfriend while I was there, but I never saw her. Now we did.”

“Which means that –”

“He’s coming, too. Soon.”

 

***

 

“How long?”

“Four, probably six if we need to stop for fuel.”

Heimdall’s joined Thor at the other end of the ship, high glass walls and chrome ceilings spread between black covers of stars.

“Do we have any way to communicate with them?”

Thor turns towards Bruce who’s sitting at the table a few meters away, sorting through what looks like an old i-Pad. Technical drawings, ship designs. Over his shoulder Loki can see him clicking away the plans and pulling up the profile picture of a woman from the database, bright, red hair ending just below her chin, big eyes and the hints of a black leather jacket visible at the edge of the frame.

“Not before we get there.”

“That means they won’t have any warning.”

“I don’t think a warning would make much of a difference.”

Loki slides down from the table beside Banner, which makes him flinch and almost drop the iPad into his lap in his haste to swipe the picture back into its folder.

“Alright, then we don’t let it get to them.”

Thor presses his palms against the glass, hard enough to turn the pads of his fingers white.

“Distribute the weapons and try to get our defences back up. If he wants a fight, he’ll get it.”

 

***

 

“We’re never going to make it.”

Thor’s pacing through the room, Loki watching him from where he’s perched on the edge of the bed.

“After everything, all that went wrong and could have gone wrong but somehow didn’t and now this just –”

He trails off and for a few moments simply stands completely still in the middle of the room, chest heaving and eyes bright, then he’s moving towards Loki in a few long, determined steps, pushing him down onto the bed with the movement of his body as his hands settle on either side of his shoulders. His lips are already parted, catching clumsily against Loki’s before he closes them around Loki’s bottom lip, kisses him properly. One of his hands slips beneath Loki’s robe, slides it to the side and off his chest, the other already working to get his flies open and he’s feels like he’s vibrating, every muscle tightly coiled beneath Loki’s fingers.

Once he’s got Loki’s pants open Thor pulls his mouth away from Loki’s to breathe against his cheek, lips grazing Loki’s jaw. The movement makes his fingers brush against Loki’s cock between them, grazing over his ribs and shoulders before it settles next to his head. It’s different from all the other times they’ve done this, heavier and incredibly, disturbingly careful, and somewhere, distantly, Loki gets it because he’s been thinking the same thing. This might be all they’re going to get, the final chance to feel this much, this fast, be this close, before it all bursts into shreds. From tomorrow on, it’s not going to be about any individual, or even staying alive, it’s going to be about how high they’re going to lose.

“Make me come.”

He feels Thor shiver above him, chest pressed to Loki’s, suck in a sharp breath against his neck. In the end they don’t manage to do more than get the rest of their clothes off, Thor’s lips grazing Loki’s hair as he wraps his hand around his cock. Loki’s eyes fall closed, his fingers tightening on Thor’s back and he feels Thor shake beneath his hands again like that alone was better than him getting of himself. One of the strongest beings in the universe, who never falters, never gets tired, never loses, and as soon as Loki touches him he trembles.

They both keep quiet, fast, shaky breaths and low moans, and it feels like a series of bright, detached flashes catching against Loki’s skin - Thor’s lips against Loki’s jaw, his thumb tracing Loki’s ribs, the way his hair grazes Loki’s cheek and collarbones every time he moves. Loki’s fingers slip on his back, the small scar from when Thor tried to kiss Sif when they were twelve, a rough patch of skin just below his shoulder from that time they tried to light a drunk fire at two a.m. without waking anyone up, two long scars above his hipbone from his first and last fight on Svfartalheim.

He comes to Thor saying his name, a single, warm gasp into the crook of his neck.

 

***

 

“I didn’t tell you how the story ended.”

Loki simply raises an eyebrow, which makes Thor laugh quietly, toes cold against Loki’s leg and one finger idly tracing the curve of Loki’s ribs.

“She fell in love again.”

His hand drops to the covers between them, eyes bright with starlight.

“She couldn’t save the guy, or reverse the curse, but she altered it so that everyone who truly fell in love by the time it was set to strike would get a second chance.”

“Sounds unrealistic.”

“Does it?”

Loki’s eyes dart over Thor’s face and for a brief, glorious second all he can think is no, it doesn’t.

“Yeah.”

Because it’s never been that easy, or that fair. Never would be. Because he can’t allow himself to hope, not now.

“Still a nice thought, though.”

 

***

 

He arrives two days later, almost quietly.

The back part of the ship is blown up immediately, two decks with thirty rooms on them, not enough to be fatal right away but to show them that it could be. It’s a few hours past midnight so they’re still sleeping in Thor’s room when it happens, Thor’s head resting on Loki’s chest and an arm slung loosely around his waist with Loki’s nose pressed to his temple. Valkyrie’s the one who finds them, wordlessly throwing two daggers onto the foot of the bed. Loki feels his breathing pick up immediately, the dull pulse of his blood against the inside of his throat as Thor slowly sits up beside him.

“Where?”, he asks, a single, sharp breath. His hand has slipped to Loki’s thigh but he doesn’t pull it away.

“Probably everywhere by now.”

“How many?”

"More than last time. Sixty at least.”

“The people?”

“On the way to the main hall. Those who survived, at least.”

Something sharp hits the wall from the outside, two of the bottles sliding off the shelf and shattering on the floor. Valkyrie draws her sword with one last look over her shoulder, hand on the door.

“Be quick.”

 

***

 

“This is not working.”

Thor wipes a bit of blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes on the corridor on their right.

“They’re too many, we’ve barely pushed them back a corridor.”, Loki pants, drawing the knife from the inside of his boot, “all they have to do is wait until they’re all that’s left.”

“We need to draw them away to one spot.”

“How?”

Thor grins, a barely there quirk of his mouth before he turns to face Loki.

“By being there.”

 

***

 

 

“Well that was disappointingly predictable.”

The girl removes her foot from Thor’s chest while two of Thanos’ minons step forward to grab his arms and twist them behind his back. Loki’s first instinct is to push in between them, his whole body jerking forward like they’re physically connected, then there’s a strong arm winding around his waist from behind and the cold press of a knife against his throat hard enough to make him gasp. He feels a bit of blood trickle down his neck beneath it, slow and warm.

“Move and I’ll make the next one deep.”

Thanos is standing behind them, watching the whole scene quietly. Part of Loki hadn’t believed that Thanos would be stupid enough to fall for it, but apparently he was.

“I’m impressed.”, he says, and in contrary to the others his voice is quiet, the steady confidence of someone who knows he’s going to have the undivided attention of every person in any room no matter what he says, “I really did believe you failed during your little trip to New York all this time. And you’ve done a remarkable job at staying hidden, all things considered.”

Loki’s fingers curl around his knife and he sees Thor’s gaze flicker down towards the movement and up to his face, the silent plea not to snap now.

“Not good enough it seems.”

The blade immediately tightens on his throat just like he expected, a bit more blood running down and gathering in the dip of his collarbone.

“I told you I’d find you.”

Thanos takes a step closer towards Thor.

“And it.”

Loki can see lightning crackle between Thor’s fingers, but he can’t use it now. Not without destroying the whole ship. The guards’ grip on Thor’s throat tightens, his head falling back around a ragged gasp when Thanos curls his fingers into his hair and pulls.

“You on the other hand have been aimlessly chasing around the universe for a whole two years, so I’m suspecting that you didn’t even know he took it.”

“You won’t either if you kill him.”

It’s pure instinct, a sharp, irrational panic that short-circuits and trumps everything else and the surprise in Thanos’ eyes tells him that he understood it all.

“I don’t think you’re in a position to bargain.”, the girl hisses against his ear, “or to threaten, unless you want to join mommy and daddy. Both pairs of them.”

“Really?”

Loki smirks, wild and breathless.

“Do you know where it is?”

“The ship’s not that big, we will soon whether you tell us or not.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

Another thong of people runs past the open door at Thanos’ side but not fast enough. They’re of time.

“To give you the chance to fulfil your end of our deal freely.”, Thanos says calmly, “you will die, but he” He nods towards Thor. “doesn’t have to.”

“You can try.”

Thor’s guard moves almost immediately, so sharply that it’s clear she really is going for the killing-blow, but her hand freezes mid-movement.

“I thought you might try that, too.”

At first Loki only feels the damp, uncomfortable cold against his skin, so unexpected that it makes him flinch, then the languid slide of the snake up his arm, the coiled strength thrumming beneath her skin as she curls around his bicep. Thanos is still focused on him, eyes fixed firmly on his face as he takes a step forward. The two men behind him move with him, spears pointed at Loki. When he nods it’s barely a motion, a sharp, little downwards-tilt of his chin like it’s a huge effort he can’t be bothered with right now and filled with the same quiet contempt he’s been looking at them with the whole time.

It’s a breathtaking jab of pain for the first two seconds, just below the crook of his elbow, Loki’s fingers curling harshly around the edge of the table in front of him. His eyes fall closed and he feels the sensation slowly numbing to a dull burn before it starts to spread beneath his skin, the movement of the snake down his body to the floor. Somewhere on his right side, Thor calls his name, but the sound is already wrong, thick and drawn-out, echoing in between Loki’s bones.

Almost detachedly he’s aware of his heart racing too fast, the way his body’s desperately trying to fight back. He pushes himself off enough to stagger a few steps backwards, everything blurring for a few seconds before Thor’s face swims into focus in front of him. His lips are still moving – his name again, Loki realizes – and Loki tries to open his mouth, tell him that it’s alright, but he can’t bring his voice to work. He almost laughs, because it suddenly hits him that that story may have had more truth to it than they’d thought.

_I’m the firstborn son of a king, too. Destiny finally did something right._

Almost comically slowly, the guard on Thor’s right side draws his sword, one smooth movement to the side and behind Thor to press the blade across his throat. It’s clinically clean, no blood on it. His eyes catch on something behind Loki, then he runs the sword across Thor’s neck without even looking down. Loki doubles over, breath catching painfully in his chest and his stomach clenching until he he’s heaving helplessly with one hand curled around on of the pieces of wreckage laying around, but he still can’t scream or move properly. The sound comes back in one, overwhelming rush, the clash of metal of metal in the background, the shouts of the guards, the faint hint of a smile in Thanos’ voice when he says:

“We’re done here.”

It’s smooth, well-worn skill, the last hints of his magic surging towards his fingers, curling around them with a low hiss. He drags himself upright, two shaky steps in Thanos’ direction.

“No, we’re not.”

Thanos’ back tenses, but he doesn’t turn around.

“I told you I wouldn’t just kill you didn’t I?”

“That’s too bad, because it means I still can.”

His foot almost gives out on the last step because Loki can barely feel it, everything numb up to his knee. It’s not going to be long now.

“It won’t save him.”

“No.”

The words are rough around the edges, breaking halfway through.

“But it’ll save what was important to him. And it’ll send you back to the hell you belong in.”

The room starts to tremble, the table shifting towards the wall while the two paintings in the back slide to the ground and shatter into pieces of coloured glass. It’s only then that Thanos finally turns around to look at him properly and it’s the first time Loki sees something other than absolute disgust on his face. Not respect exactly, but genuine surprise at least. The floor around him starts to lift, one of the doors behind Thanos busting open so violently that he barely manages to avoid knocking against Loki. Around them, green flames are flickering up, silently dancing up their shins and arms. Thanos doesn’t even flinch, simply keeps staring at Loki and as soon as the two guards still standing around Thor step in to kill him he raises his hand.

The second door crashes into the cabinet on their right while Loki closes his eyes, his hands clenching at his sides. When he digs his nails into his palms, they’re numb, too. He sees the explosion against his eyelids, feels the entire ship shift beneath his feet. Somewhere on the corridor, there’s the sharp swell of screams as the rest of the ship pulls lose. His legs give out first, his knees hitting the ground sharply, then he lands on his back with his head near Thor’s, their shoulders almost touching. Behind them, parts of the outside of the ship start to give away with dull, almost quiet creaks of metal against metal, but it’s going to hold. For now.

The last thing he sees is a bit of starry sky through a burned hole in the ceiling.

_Home_


	2. Bonus: The Valkyrie's Tale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is probably more like the beginning of a new story but I couldn't get it out of my head so..enjoy I guess?

_Whatever Loki did, it worked. It took another four hours of fighting, but thanks to Loki’s magic we managed to get the majority of the survivors onto one of the ships while Thanos and the others were distracted. The entire section Thor and Loki were in exploded and we don’t know what happened to the people who were still in there, just that Thanos survived. Three of his minons were seriously injured and two others died, but he sadly didn’t. The bad ones never seem to, somehow. But then I suppose I haven't exactly been one of the history-book heroes myself, and I’m still here, too, so maybe I’m not one to judge or complain._

_There’s a story my mother used to tell me every night, about a princess so beautiful that the sun and the stars itself wanted to marry her. She married an Asgardian prince instead, the heir to the throne with the sharp wit of his father and the cold beauty of his mother. When she thought that he’d left her, she cursed every first-born son of a king to die before he could break another girl’s heart and with that she broke her own because the next one she truly loved was a first-born son of a prince as well. She didn’t notice until it was too late because his father had sent him as an ordinary ambassador to negotiate trade treaties and a new peace between their realms. After he died, she altered the curse to only hit those whose intentions were truly wrong, but who can ever tell that, really? The end of the story was that she turned those she couldn’t save into stars, constellations to watch over the people and the loved ones they had left behind. I always wondered if that curse applied to girls as well if it really existed. It must have, because I had to watch the love of my life die fighting Hela and if there was ever a princess in this world, someone really deserving to be called that, it was her._

_But life doesn’t work like that._

_They never got constellations, I checked. Every night. I was so angry at them at first for simply leaving like that, letting us deal with all of this alone with no hint as to what to do next. We didn’t even have bodies to bury after the entire section was blown off like that. We had to stand in front of two worn-down metal baskets full of women’s jewellery and whatever half-burned satin clothes they could find. In Asgard they would have had a boat soaked in fire and flowers, here they had an awkward speech and Feyir’s first singing practice. This is not to say that the people didn’t care, they did. I’ve never seen a nation love their princes as much as Asgard does theirs, that was one of the reasons why I decided to serve the crown back then. It’s just that it didn’t matter._

_When you have to choose between the living and the dead, the living always win. One of my first thoughts was that I’d always known I’d regret coming with them to help them fight Hela and now I could finally see that I’d been right. Everything had been manageable as long as I hadn't cared and the moment I let myself again, it all went to hell just like the last time. Hela was so different from Thanos and yet they’re similar, in a strange kind of way. Both ruthless and uncompromising. Both obsessed with ruling the universe, either for Asgard or for themselves because they think they're the only ones who know how to. And death follows them both wherever they go. Sometimes I wonder whether it wouldn’t have been more merciful to let them kill us. Whether they were the ones who took the easy way out. We’ve been going for six days now and we’re going to run out of fuel soon if we don’t find somewhere to dock._

_Communication with Earth is still down, but I’m trying not to be in the meetings too much so I only know the rumours. I can see them looking at me in the hallway sometimes, after the meetings, as though I have no right to be upset about any of this, and maybe they’re right. As I said: I left, after all. I never wanted to come back, never even thought about it, until Thor showed up. I don’t remember the marble and gold buildings, I don’t even remember most of the stories, but I remember him, the little boy with hair like threads of gold. Bruce was the only other person who didn’t go to the meetings, so I guess it made sense that we started to spend a lot of time together._

_The only two people who don’t really know where they belong. Although that’s not strictly true, either. He does. He started to tell me stories the second night, about a girl with red hair, brilliant eyes and skin the colour of marble that always smelled like leather, then about Thor and the time he’d fought against Loki in New York. About Thor’s ex-girlfriend, whom he’d met once at a science congress and almost asked out before he knew they were dating. How she’d called him after she had broken up with Thor and they’d spend an entire evening walking through the deserted streets of the city with a bottle of cheap red wine and a box of steaming hot take-away chips. How he feels guilty about that now, about never telling him about it . How Clint’s children still keep asking when Thor’s going to come back to play with them again. How the youngest one refuses to sleep without her little figurine of him. Once he ran out of stories about him he talked about the rest of the team, too. Tony. Wanda. Steve._

_And I listened, something I’ve never been very good at but somehow it was easy then._

_So I guess this letter is my way of doing the same. In written form, so that it isn’t forgotten after the lights go out or in case one of us doesn’t make it out of this. I can’t change that I let two people I was sworn to protect die, that I couldn’t save them just like I couldn’t save my girlfriend, but I can make sure that this wasn’t for nothing. That someone’s going to keep telling their story._

_And I can make sure that Thanos pays._

 

 

***

 

In the end she finds him by pure chance, in a bar on the outskirts of Oslo.

It’s Friday, the evening party-rush just starting to arrive in a puff of laugher, perfume and polished leather boots, and he’s sitting at a table in the back corner, the only one who’s not trying to subtly sneak glances of the girls passing by on their way to the bar. He’s got blonde hair, a well worn, black leather jacket and the absolutely straight back and quick, calculated looks of a soldier and although she’s only got Bruce’s descriptions to go on she instantly knows that it’s him. 

She moves off her stool at the edge of the counter, setting the second beer down in front of him while she slides into the free seat on his right and opens her own bottle.

“This is probably the only good thing about most men being misogynistic assholes. You get drinks faster.”

His lips part for a moment, eyes darting over her face and brows drawing together like he’s about to ask her whether she’s being serious or not, then he simply says: “Thank you.”

For a moment he simply watches her drink, close enough for their shoulders to brush and his hands curled around the cool glass of his bottle. 

“I’m –”

“Steve Rogers, I know. Thor told me about you.”

“You know Thor?”

“I did.”

He visibly stiffens, his knee bumping against hers as he shifts to face her fully.

“Did?”

“He’s dead.”

She doesn’t check to see his reaction, but she can feel the way he completely freezes beside her, hear how his voice is shaking around the next word. 

“How?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It –”

“The guy who did this is coming here, too, and if you’re not prepared you and this planet are going to be dead, too.”, she interrupts him sharply, “you can't bring him back, but you can stop it happening again. Stop him coming.”

“Who’s coming?”

With one, smooth movement she takes the shot still standing untouched beside his beer and downs it before she slams it back onto the table and turns to look at him.

“Thanos.”


	3. Bonus II: The Guardian and the King's Maid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I promise this ist the last one(probably lmao) but I had to get this out of my head.

He can hear the shower running through the wall, the soft tap of the water against the tiles and the voice of his girlfriend humming a song to the rhythm of it. It’s still unfamiliar to see the forest outside instead of the endless stretch of the universe, the stars just barely visible above the black lines of the treetops. Drawing his gaze away, Heimdall grabs the battle on the table beside him and pours another shot into his glass before he downs it in one go.

“This is not fair you know.”, he says softly and he feels the anger come back just at the thought of it, hot and insistent, “I never signed up for this, having to see you die. Leading them alone. Bringing them to Earth when you were the one who knew what to expect there, the people, the cities, how they lived, how they talked. When it was the planet you loved. There’s going to be no one here to give that now, seeing it all through the eyes of someone who can make you see its magic. That’s something only love can do.”

He reaches to fill the glass again, then puts it back down and takes the sip straight from the bottle. The bag of other things they found in Thor’s room is still laying on the bed together with a sword and part of Loki’s old armour, but Heimdall hasn’t been able to bring himself to open it yet.

“You knew she was pregnant, didn’t you? Even I didn’t, but somehow you managed to convince her to tell you. That’s why you didn’t want me to help.”

The bottle comes down beside the glass with a harsh clack of glass on metal. Somehow, not even getting drunk works anymore, not in the way that it used to, at least.

“But guess what, we didn’t ask you to do that. You had no right to make that choice for her, for us. I know I’ve already said this but –” His voice breaks, eyes falling closed for a moment before he opens them again. The stars are blurring in front of his vision, barely there sketches of light painted against the walls. “I could barely talk to her for days, do you know that? It’s probably incredibly mean to hope that you can somehow see that in Valhalla and have to live with that knowledge, but it’s seems to be the only way I can handle this right now. Anger. She was softer, gentler, which was even scarier, in a way. I don’t know why, I guess she’ll just always see you differently than I do, know you in a way I never will. You were the reason that made me wonder if there was some truth to what they say about the first love. That you never really leave it behind. She still loves you, Thor, and I understand that, in a way, and there are so many things I don’t know about the time you spend together, and it all made me aware again of how massively I failed. I always protected you for her, too. Because you made each other better, needed each other in ways I couldn’t give her. Or you. It took me so long not to be jealous, to accept it and now that I have you just go. And it’s even worse with Loki, because somehow I could never show him how much I care about him the way I could with you. You never knew because he made me swear not to tell you, but I taught him astronomy on the free evenings or when there was a party we both didn’t want to go to. We were not so different, actually, back then. But now every time I look at the stars, the constellations, I think of him, the story I used to tell him and it’s the worst feeling in the world, which is very strange to get used to after a lifetime of keeping watch over them.”

He laughs, but the sound comes out broken.

“I kissed him once, I bet he never told you that. We got drunk by the pool and then he suddenly old me that he needed someone to teach him how to do it, completely calm like that was a perfectly normal thing to ask between your mates. Watch the stars together. Talk about the latest curt gossip. Make out.” The sound of the water suddenly cuts off and he can hear the tap of her feet against the tiles, heavier, less graceful than they used to be.

“Actually, the once is not quite true. It happened another two or three times and it was always him who did it, just crawled into my lap and started to kiss until we were both flushed and panting. Then two months later he met his first boyfriend and I got together with Elaine. I was the one who kept Odin from finding about either.”

There’s static running beneath his skin, Loki’s voice saying _do that again_.

“Later I did that for you, too, remember? That young servant girl you had a massive crush on instead of the princess you were actually supposed to be looking at? Maybe you weren’t so different, after all, when it comes to that. And now I can’t stop thinking what would have happened if it’d gone differently, if we’d let it work out the way it was going to because the only thing to stop you from being stupidly brave has always been to give you something even more interesting.”

He clears his throat, reaches for the bottle again.

“I guess we’ll never know, or it’ll be just another thing I failed at. Like never telling Loki about his mother. Letting your sister believe that you were both dead just to keep her quiet. Not telling you how much I love you, with words, not just with actions. And I have no right to be angry, but I am. All these people expect me to lead, and I just –”

His voice breaks and he reaches for the cap of the bottle, downs that glass, too, without looking at it or flinching.

“It’s not supposed to be like this. There are some things that shouldn’t happen, the same way parents shouldn’t have to bury their children and I don’t know how to deal with that. The knowledge that it can.”

He doesn’t hear the creak of the door opening, the little clack when it closes again.

“Tell me how to deal with that.”

She’s standing in the door, wrapped in one of the large, white towels and a hand resting loosely on the barely-there swell of her stomach as though she’s not even aware of it, an instinct just beginning to form.

“Who are you talking to?”

Heimdall chokes back the hysterical giggle that threatens to bubble up in his throat and takes another sip of his drink instead, his back turned towards her again, before he says:

“The stars.”


	4. Bonus III: The Seventeenth Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> well, I did say probably....and I feel like he did deserve something, too, so here it is. (and since he is the last one from Thor's immediate crew this really is the last one I promise haha).

Bruce was twenty-six when his mother died, his dad two years later.

He barely remembers it, just flashes of black lace, coldness, the bottle of wine his best friend brought him after her funeral, one of those over-expensive vintages, and how incredibly ordinary it all seemed. That the world should have shifted, the stars darkened, and the skies cried fire and all that happened was aunt Margret talking about her husband’s upcoming hip surgery over potato soup. The night it happened had been a beautiful spring night, the first warm one since that winter and he’d been working on his thesis for a whole week straight so he’d gone out to get the groceries for the weekend and breathe a bit of fresh air. He still remembers telling not to wait up for him and that the groceries cost 21 dollars and 34 cents. ‘I love you’, should have been what he said, but that’s the thing, you always think you’ll do it next time until suddenly there isn’t one. By the time he came back she wasn’t breathing, eyes closed and still sitting on the sofa where he’d left her with her dinner going cold on the table. 

There was a commercial playing on the TV and the first thing he thought was how surreal it looked, too quiet and wrong. The ambulance came six minutes later, but all they could do was take the time of death and while they were taking her pulse a group of drunk students walked past the house, yelling that one party song they wouldn’t stop playing that year. So no, the world didn’t shift.

No one cared.

He wasn’t young enough for it to shock anymore and they all kept looking at him like they somehow expected him to know how to handle this, like it was somehow a part of the adult experience to learn how to lose your parents. It took them only three days to clear out her things, but the whole flat kept smelling like her for months. It drove his dad insane. His mother had always told him that the dead don’t like to be alone so once someone in the family dies, someone else follows them. He never believed it until his dad did. A car crash, all instantly dead. 

He was supposed to come to the presentation of his doctoral thesis and Bruce had been so incredibly angry, checking his phone until he had to turn it off and go in, his voice shaking with it during the first few minutes of his presentation. When his phone finally rang, it was to tell him the news. They had bought expensive Whiskey, and he’d almost broken the glass in his hands with how hard he was clutching it. He remembers hating him then, too, for a few seconds, for completely ruining this day, forcing him to forever associate it with this incredible, overwhelming pain he could barely breathe through. He remembers desperately wishing to be able to take that thought back, and everything he’d thought before. Wishing that he’d send him ‘I love you’ at least instead of just closing the chat box on his phone out of spite. But again, you never know until it’s too late. It’s one of the stories he didn’t tell Valkyrie, but somehow she sensed it:

Two nights in, she wordlessly shared her Vodka bottle with him. On the fifth, she left the whole on the top of the cabinet when she left.

And it’s exactly like it was back then: it didn’t change anything.

A week after the little ceremony on the ship Bruce sees a guy walking around in Loki’s old armour and barely anyone even notices. One of the kids gets his coat to play. When Heimdall finds out, it’s the first time Bruce’s seen him really, properly angry and none of them understand why. They tell him something about sharing resources, thinking about the living. He shoots them one look, then takes the rest of the things to his room without another word. That night, he takes out the rings for the first time in almost eight years. He’s surprised they’re even still here, after Ultron and two years of the Hulk on a planet at the edge of the universe. Maybe he finally did something right, after all. He’d found the silver necklace in an old hipster shop in London, stumbling drunkenly through the streets for the third day in a row.

It’d been his third stop in Europe after Rome and Paris, the only way he could think of to keep going, stay numb, not think. By the time he was in London he’d realized that it wasn’t that easy, but he’d kept going. And then he’d seen the necklace. It was slightly damaged on one side, old, obviously handmade silver, too roughly made for a slender girl’s neck but the perfect size for him. He’d bought it with the last 10 pounds he’d found in his pockets, not quite sure why and cursing himself for not getting another bottle of tequila instead until he emptied out his backpack and the wedding rings had fallen onto the bed. His sister had left them in their room for him to find, another one of the things she’d figured out before him. 

All he has from Thor is a knife, from Loki a scar across his right shoulder, right below the bone. 

Nothing to show off.

“Natasha and Wanda say they’ll come over.”

Steve’s standing in the doorway of the little balcony, phone in hand and the second bottle of beer in the other. Valkyrie had brought him back from the bar two nights ago and he hadn’t left since.

Maybe something had changed, after all.

“And knowing Wanda, she’ll probably bring Vision.”

“Vision?”

Steve laughs a little, eyes bright.

“Yeah, you missed a lot.”

“Nothing I’m not used to.”, Bruce says, shifting to sit up on the bed. “Did you really break up?”

“Sort of.”

“Why?”

“Long story.”

He sits down on the bed beside him, the sun so low in the sky behind the window on their left that Bruce can only see the dark contours of his silhouette.

“My parents died.”

Bruce doesn’t know why he says it now, and why to Steve, but suddenly it feels like the most important thing in the word to tell him. The only one that really matters. Steve looks at him quietly for a long moment, then says:

“My mother died, too. Tuberculosis, when I was seventeen. Bucky was the one who helped me survive.”

It comes out clipped, unpractised, like he hasn’t been telling that story a lot either.

“And then you lost him, too.”

“I thought I did, yeah.”

“Does it ever stop? Missing them?”

Bruce can see Steve turn towards him, feel his eyes on the side of his face.

“Not really. You think it does, but then there are those moments when you see or hear something that reminds you of them, or there’s a special day you associate with them, a song, a shop, a smell, anything, and it comes back with full force. It makes you feel –”

“Helpless.”

There’s a pause, bird screaming somewhere outside the room. Steve’s still watching him, completely, utterly still.

“Yeah.”

“Did you feel guilty?”

Somewhere, Bruce realizes that it’s not exactly a tactful question, but right now he doesn’t care.

“He fell off a wagon right beside him during a mission I led so yeah, I did. I still do.”

“Does that go away?”

“No.”

“What about the girl?”, he asks after Steve’s taken another sip, “the one you met during the war? How old is she now?”

“Just over 90. Or, she was, she died six months ago.”

Of course she did. They all do.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t –”

“No, it’s – it was different. She was old, it’s like –”

He clears his throat, his gaze flickering to the door behind Bruce for a moment them before it settles on him again.

“It still hurt, but it was easier, knowing that there was no other way. That she had a long, happy life, two children, a great husband. That at least one person I cared about from then, somehow, despite everything, did it all right.”

“Who else was there?”

“Howard Stark, Tony’s father, died in a car accident. Two officers, both of them killed during the last battles of the war. My uncle got cancer when he was 53, not long after I left, my aunt inherited my mom’s family side’s weak heart and died three years later. A few weeks ago I randomly found out that even my high school girlfriend was killed thirty years after I went into the ice while shooting a news report in Vietnam.”  
Bruce huffs out a sound somewhere halfway to a laugh, rough and thick, sliding the necklace back beneath his shirt. 

“Alright, drinks then.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

Steve raises the bottle in his hand, the other braced on the covers beside him. His eyes flicker to the place where the necklace is hanging beneath his shirt for a moment, then he simply says:

“To the dead.”

Bruce klicks his bottle to his, then takes a long sip before he says it back.

“To the dead.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading I hope you enjoyed the ride. I'm also at wordwhisper.tumblr.com if you want to leave comments there or talk, the askbox is always open.


End file.
